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SAN DIEGO – (September 12, 2013) A major new finding that will significantly advance efforts to create the world's first antibody-based AIDS vaccine was published today by researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology.

Researchers have discovered a microbe that stays forever young by rejuvenating every time it reproduces. The findings, published in Current Biology, provide fundamental insights into the mechanisms of aging.

While aging remains an inevitable fact of life, an international team involving researchers from the University of Bristol and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany has found that this is not the case for a common species of yeast microbe which has evolved to stay young.

Scientists and conservators have developed a new method to diagnose painting canvases from the back, without disturbing a single fibre, to see if they can withstand the stress of handling and travel.

Using the method - which is similar to the way doctors measure blood sugar without the need for needles – scientists examined 12 paintings by the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí.

They assessed the 'health' of the canvases, which are known to degrade with time due to acidity and environmental conditions. Once a canvas is brittle, expensive conservation is required.

A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the "Cambrian explosion" when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.

The findings, published online today in the journal Current Biology, resolve "Darwin's dilemma": the sudden appearance of a plethora of modern animal groups in the fossil record during the early Cambrian period.

Researchers at the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center (PDRC) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that the pancreatic protein Nkx6.1 – a beta-cell enriched transcription factor – is essential to maintaining the functional state of beta cells.

Type 2 diabetes is characterized by impaired insulin secretion by pancreatic beta cells in response to a rise in blood glucose levels. The study, published in the September 26 edition of Cell Reports, shows that loss of NKx6.1 in mice caused rapid onset diabetes.

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University microbiologist has found a breakthrough herbal medicine treatment for a common human fungal pathogen that lives in almost 80 percent of people.

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS: New genetic research led by the Genographic Project consortium shows a distinctive ancestry for the Uros populations of Peru and Bolivia that predates the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and may date back to the earliest settlement of the Altiplano, or high plain, of the central Andes some 3,700 years ago. Despite the fact that the Uros today share many lineages with the surrounding Andean populations, they have maintained their own divergent genetic ancestry.

A study of patients infected with acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection found that women had higher rates of spontaneous viral clearance—undetectable levels of the virus without initiating drug therapy. Findings published in Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that the gene IL28B (rs12979860) and HCV genotype 1 are also independent predictors of spontaneous HCV clearance.

Just days before a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and National Taiwan University set out to conduct fieldwork in the East China Sea, Typhoon Morakot—one of the most destructive storms ever to hit Taiwan—made landfall on the island, causing widespread damage and drastically altering the flow of water along the nearby continental shelf.

The typhoon, which struck in Aug. 2009, caused catastrophic damage in Taiwan, killing several hundred people and dropping up to 2 meters of rain in just 5 days in the mountains.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — The largest study of computed tomographic (CT) scans taken in emergency departments across the country for children with head injuries describes the prevalence of "incidental findings" — results that were not expected from the injury — and categorizes them by urgency.

The article, titled "Incidental findings in children with blunt head trauma evaluated with cranial CT scans," was published in the August issue of Pediatrics, and provides a context for doctors in emergency departments who encounter these situations.

Sexually transmitted infection researchers potentially have reached a milestone in vaccine treatment for genital herpes, according to a report to be presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Denver, Colo., on today, Sept. 12.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Like a pea going through a straw, tiny molecules can pass through microscopic cylinders known as nanotubes. This could potentially be used to select molecules according to size — for example, to purify water by allowing water molecules to pass through while blocking salt or other substances.

CHICAGO --- A new study shows significant health benefits for uninsured people living under the federal poverty level in the suburbs when they receive access to primary care.

Uninsured residents in a suburban collar county of Chicago reported a big improvement in their health status and increased their preventive care and screenings after one year of access to primary care, reports Northwestern Medicine research.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The modern-day tulip tree, state tree of Indiana as well as Kentucky and Tennessee, can trace its lineage back to the time of the dinosaurs, according to newly published research by an Indiana University paleobotanist and a Russian botanist.

The tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipfera, has been considered part of the magnolia family. But David Dilcher of Indiana University Bloomington and Mikhail S. Romanov of the N.V. Tsitsin Main Botanical Garden in Moscow show that it is closely related to fossil plant specimens from the Lower Cretaceous period.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of a mass vaccination campaign with a new meningitis serogroup A vaccine, PsA-TT, in sub-Saharan Africa found that it had a dramatic impact on cases of serogroup meningitis and on carriage of the disease-causing bacteria in the throat, according to new research published in The Lancet.